On “Black Willow,” Loma’s singers declare in pristine harmony: “there’s a spark in the air/I let it go out by itself.” It’s a gorgeous moment, but Loma was formed by the opposite impulse; the desire to capture an elusive feeling before it slips away.
On the recommendation of a friend, Jonathan Meiburg listened to the Cross Record’s 2015 album Wabi-Sabi and invited the duo of singer Emily Cross and the multi-instrumentalist and engineer Dan Duszynski to open for his band Shearwater. Impressed by how the duo was able to conjure an enthralling mass of sound each night, he suggested they all work together.
The trio unintentionally formed a new band together, and “Black Willow” demonstrates that Meiburg was correct to intuit that the three of them might have chemistry. Cooking with simple but strong ingredients — a whisp of an organ, an unrelenting metronomic beat and their intertwined harmonies — the three songwriters have created a vivid and engrossing form of nocturnal blues with “Black Willow,” conjuring up slow-moving gothic Americana delicate enough to suggest it could dissipate at any moment but powerful enough to subsume you whole.
Loma will play the Sunset Tavern on Saturday, April 14th. Until then, you can watch the video for “Black Willow” below.
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